The response has been overwhelmingly positive. In addition to our customers and channel partners, several analysts and members of the media have supported this direction and the ISR G2, and there is a “feel good” factor about the announcement. David Gartner of the Information Week called the ISRs as the foot soliders of Networking. I thought that was a great analogy.

Yesterday, there was a note from Wedbrush Morgan giving Cisco an upgrade for this launch referring to the ISR G2 and the ASR 1000 series, including the new ASR 1002-Fixed platform, while stating “we view the ISR to be the anchor product of Cisco’s enterprise networking business and the single largest margin contributor in the company. The first generation ISR was introduced about five years ago, so the ISR G2 represents one of the largest installed base upgrade opportunities the industry has seen”.

This launch was picked up by the media in different geographies. With over 7 million ISRs deployed worldwide, and many pre-ISR routers still powering branch offices, yes, it does represent a significant installed base.

“Borderless Network is intended to support applications, processing cycles and services that are increasingly distributed and virtualized, such as those in cloud computing and software-as-a-service environments. Some analysts say it is more than another Cisco “marketecture,” though. “

“Taken together, the Borderless Networks architecture and the ISR G2 form a sort of central nervous system network that simplifies the delivery of networked business services throughout IT organizations, large and small. Cisco said a five-phased plan will help “deliver services and applications to anyone, anywhere, on any device, at anytime — seamlessly, reliably, and securely.”

Jeffery Burt at eWeekcomments on the trends taking place in the industry to warrant the ISR G2’s feature updates:

“These capabilities are going to be important, given the current trends, Palmer said. By 2012, 90 percent of the bandwidth for consumer traffic will be video-based. In addition, employees in greater numbers are bringing in their consumer devices—such as iPhones or their own laptops—and expecting the same level of access to enterprise applications that they’d receive from company-issued devices.”

There are many others. Social media was an active component here as well. Lots of good responses on Cisco’s Routers Facebook page and the CiscoGeeks Twitter feed.

Even some of our competitors also found it worthwhile to give our announcement a plug. As always, we welcome that.

A New Beginning:

It is very important to view this announcement not as not the end of a campaign, but as the beginning of one. Yes, we have the products out, but clearly there is work to be done as we work with our customers to help evolve their networks to suit their business needs. It doesn’t happen overnight.

While network upgrades are always painful, and require careful planning, we have spent a lot of thought on simplifying the upgrade process, offering a significant degree of investment protection and making it as painless as possible.

We don’t want to get carried away with just the positive sentiments, but listen to what is not working as well. What needs to be further improved. So, we are continuing to listen. To our customers. To our partners. They are guiding our next steps while helping us deliver more value.

Look for more news and other information here. But as always, you’re welcome to post your comments right here on the Innovation Blog.

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